The Fun Pimps have released a new experimental build of their survival game 7 Days to Die, with it some new options you can tweak to get a much better experience.

It's no secret that 7 Days has been a bit of a system hog, it hasn't historically performed well but they're finally making progress on that front. With the "Alpha 17.4 Experimental B4" release put out a few days ago, it now allows you to disable SS Reflections and that one single option makes it perform much nicer while off (and it still looks good).

Doing my own tests, turning it off gives an instant boost of 10-20FPS depending on where you are and what you're looking at. Times where it would often dip down hard to 40FPS and below, are now mostly for me sitting around 55-60FPS and the way the game feels is a huge amount smoother. Thanks to that, I've been able to give it a run on High settings and have a very smooth ride.

This experimental release also adds in the ability to let you turn off Bloom, a new Medium shadow distance option with Low reduced to faster values, an Ultra graphics preset along with Medium and High seeing adjustments, trader opening times should be fixed and an Automove console command. They've also fixed numerous bugs as well like a nasty memory leak causing crashes, explosion kills not giving XP, Molotov burning kills only giving XP for the first enemy and so on.

As for the next major version of 7 Days, Alpha 18, they've already confirmed a lot of new content is coming. There's going to be a bunch of new weapons like the M60 Heavy Machine Gun, Double Barrel Shotgun, C4, Taser Baton, a Junk Turret and more. We're also going to see higher resolution item icons, new desert textures and terrain, a dynamic music system, an overhaul to the Book system to permanently unlock perks and loads more.

It sounds like both 7 Days to Die Alpha 17.4 and Alpha 18 are going to be some great steps forward for this survival game. Hope to see even more focus on the performance during the Alpha 18 development cycle, still plenty of areas that do need improving.

You can find your own copy of 7 Days to Die on Humble Store and Steam. If you wish to try the current experimental, it's an opt-in beta on Steam, no password needed.

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I run most games at low-mid setting with 60 or more FPS (e.g. Overwatch). But not 7dtd, it was awful. On lowest settings 30-40 with common drops to much lower numbers. I really hope they fixed this now, because I don't consider unstable 30FPS being playable (same issue with Grim Dawn).

SwiftpawI tried telling the Fun Pimps about this but didn't hear back. Please everyone tell them so that they can make sure this issue which looks seemingly easy to fix is on the roadmap and gets fixed.

If it was that easy to fix it would have been fixed by now ;)
(More precisely it would have never been an issue, I wanted Vulkan to be fully supported from the start on with A17, but I'm not a shader guy )

SwiftpawI tried telling the Fun Pimps about this but didn't hear back. Please everyone tell them so that they can make sure this issue which looks seemingly easy to fix is on the roadmap and gets fixed.

If it was that easy to fix it would have been fixed by now ;)
(More precisely it would have never been an issue, I wanted Vulkan to be fully supported from the start on with A17, but I'm not a shader guy )

Unless they aren't yet ready to support Vulkan so they don't care about fixing that issue so that we can use Vulkan instead. Maybe it was because some effects weren't enabled and no doubt the missing textures sped things up, but as other reports for other games have indicated, Vulkan sure does seem to speed things up in 7DtD so I hope it'll start being supported soon.

My favorite changes to 7d2d have been less about graphics and more about game options and play.

I love that I can now make it harder for the Zs to damage materials ... they're rotting flesh, after all ;). It doesn't even have to be 7d2d; it can be 14d2d or even 30d2d, allowing the game to go from a primarily-horde-survival-with-a-little-bit-of-exploration game to a primarily-exploration-with-a-little-bit-of-horde-survival game. Oh, and I can slow the Zs down to be walking dead, individually not too dangerous to the wary, but it's easy to get swarmed.

The progressive skill system is welcome too. I haven't played since, like, alpha 10 I think, so it's a waaayyy different and waaayyyyy better experience now.

NanobangMy favorite changes to 7d2d have been less about graphics and more about game options and play.

I love that I can now make it harder for the Zs to damage materials ... they're rotting flesh, after all ;). It doesn't even have to be 7d2d; it can be 14d2d or even 30d2d, allowing the game to go from a primarily-horde-survival-with-a-little-bit-of-exploration game to a primarily-horde-survival-with-a-little-bit-of-exploration game. Oh, and I can slow the Zs down to be walking dead, individually not too dangerous to the wary, but it's easy to get swarmed.

The progressive skill system is welcome too. I haven't played since, like, alpha 10 I think, so it's a waaayyy different and waaayyyyy better experience now.

And vehicles. Vrrrrooooommmm!

I think you misquoted your little-bit thing there... aren't they both the same? Either way, since almost every house will try to kill you with Zeds exploding from cupboards, false floors and collapsing stairs, exploration takes absolute balls of steel.

Great game though. Loving the look and feel of A17 and with A18 adding in so much content, I'm excited to see what the finished game will look like.

I haven't tried the latest changes in 7D2D yet, but my recent time playing it (a couple of months ago) and I'm somewhat unhappy with the Default settings (most likely the same now). I've spent lots of time with the game in the past, both before the Zombie A.I. path-finding changes and after them. I did find the path-finding used to be more realistic, but then the developers changed it to stop people from building "over-powered" bases where the horde zombies couldn't get to you.

Here are my issues with the Default settings:

The game starts off at a reasonable level, but then the number and strength of zombies encountered during exploration goes up at a horrendous rate, assuming you are playing well. (I'm a veteran at this game and know exactly what I'm doing when I'm playing.)

One aspect of the game is exploration, but once you have gone past the first few game-weeks of survival, then exploration becomes lethal (due to ever increasing toughness of zombies encountered) so I find I am unable to explore any more for fear of being killed. (This is survival after all, if you're role-playing it properly.)

So the game becomes a grind instead. You can't go into buildings, looking for juicy loot. You just stick to the outdoor areas and grind for components and resources. I find the hunt for nitrate for crafting gunpowder, needed for ammo is also annoying.

I'd rather be able to explore and get further along the skills tree, before the game becomes ridiculously hard - And that is the Default Setting, and I'm a veteran player. One farmhouse containing 4 Cops, 10 Irradiated Zombies, 10 Ferals, 5 Zombie Dogs, and 20 regular zombies - The sort of thing I'm talking about. You start the game and the same farmhouse has 4 regular zombies in it.

Leading me on to this: Yes, it is good that the developers have left in a load of controls so you can tweak the experience to your liking.

SwiftpawI tried telling the Fun Pimps about this but didn't hear back. Please everyone tell them so that they can make sure this issue which looks seemingly easy to fix is on the roadmap and gets fixed.

If it was that easy to fix it would have been fixed by now ;)
(More precisely it would have never been an issue, I wanted Vulkan to be fully supported from the start on with A17, but I'm not a shader guy )

Unless they aren't yet ready to support Vulkan so they don't care about fixing that issue so that we can use Vulkan instead. Maybe it was because some effects weren't enabled and no doubt the missing textures sped things up, but as other reports for other games have indicated, Vulkan sure does seem to speed things up in 7DtD so I hope it'll start being supported soon.

Well, some of the shaders are still up for some rework so that should help with getting stuff fixed, but as I said I'm not a shader guy so I couldn't do that part myself.
If it was my decision Vulkan would've been working already, but it's for obvious reasons not the top priority as it's not like the game wasn't working on any of the supported platforms at all.

@g000h:
Yeah, options are really a good thing. You can never satisfy everyone with defaults, no matter what you make them. Even on the team we have different views on some stuff, that's just how it is
I for example run Sirillion's water/food HUD mod because I like those stats to be directly visible. That's why I think (besides easily accessible options in the game itself) mod support is really important. It helps shape the game in a lot more ways to make more people happy

NanobangMy favorite changes to 7d2d have been less about graphics and more about game options and play.

I love that I can now make it harder for the Zs to damage materials ... they're rotting flesh, after all ;). It doesn't even have to be 7d2d; it can be 14d2d or even 30d2d, allowing the game to go from a primarily-horde-survival-with-a-little-bit-of-exploration game to a primarily-horde-survival-with-a-little-bit-of-exploration game. Oh, and I can slow the Zs down to be walking dead, individually not too dangerous to the wary, but it's easy to get swarmed.

The progressive skill system is welcome too. I haven't played since, like, alpha 10 I think, so it's a waaayyy different and waaayyyyy better experience now.

And vehicles. Vrrrrooooommmm!

I think you misquoted your little-bit thing there... aren't they both the same?

Oops, lol! Fixed!

scaineEither way, since almost every house will try to kill you with Zeds exploding from cupboards, false floors and collapsing stairs, exploration takes absolute balls of steel.

Thanks, but I'm a cowardly explorer. I usually knock holes in outer walls around a building to flush the Zs out into the street where I can run-and-gun them more safely. It's too scary when they burst out of closets and whatnots. (But it's kindof funny to open an exterior door into one of their closet hidey-holes. They just stand their clueless when they respawn, waiting to be head-shootified. XD)

Just to be clear, I am a massive fan of 7D2D. I very much appreciate all the hard work and on-going improvements that the game has received. Checking my Steam account, I've put in over 450 hours of play. I've played Alpha 15, 16, 17, but not the very latest incremental update.

I'm keen on realistic survival gaming, so although zombies shouldn't be able to easily break down walls, at the same time the average human can't carry a massive inventory of building frames and materials (and build a house within a game-day). Some liberties taken and given. I've got no problem with the crafting, the skills system, the game world, the building mechanics - They're all fantastic. I rate 7D2D amongst the very top of games I like to play.

I'm mostly just unhappy with the Default Settings and how they deal with Zombie Spawning. I feel that maybe the buildings should have set quantities of zombies, and this shouldn't go up just because you're playing the game well and increasing your player level. The fact is, they go up, but not at a reasonable rate (like say, doubling the number of zombies). More like 20 times the difficulty compared to the start of the game. It isn't just number of zombies. We're talking stronger, more dangerous, faster zombies, even zombies that regenerate when wounded!

I feel like I need to quit my 100+ game-day session, and start fresh with a zero-level character, just so I can get back to exploring buildings again. I had a friend at work who gave 7D2D a try, a year or two ago (alpha 15,16), but couldn't get his head around the survival and was dying lots immediately, and after about 5 hours gave up. Alpha 15 and 16 were easier than Alpha 17 - This guy is a proper gamer (The sort of person who completes Dark Souls) - and he gave up on that easier version of 7D2D game.

Okay, okay - The settings can be tweaked by the player. I am resisting changing them for now. But eventually I might do so. Also, I need to load up the latest incremental release and have a good session on it.

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